September 22, 2001
CONNECTIONS
Attacks on U.S. Challenge Postmodern True Believers
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
Cataclysms not only cast shadows over human victims but also shake the
foundations of intellectual life: wars can shift the direction of
scholarship; genocide can upend the presumptions of sociology. The
destruction of the World Trade Center and the attack on the Pentagon may
have similar effects, challenging the intellectual and ethical
perspectives of two sets of ideas: postmodernism (affectionately known as
pomo) and postcolonialism (which might be called poco). These ideas, which
have affected political debate and university scholarship, are now being
subject to a shock that may lead in two directions: on one hand to a more
intense commitment, and on the other — I hope — to a more intense
rejection.
In general postmodernists challenge assertions that truth and ethical
judgment have any objective validity. Postcolonial theorists, who focus on
cultures that have experienced Western imperialism, agree in part,
suggesting that the seemingly universalist principles of the West are
ideological constructs. Many have also implied that one culture,
particularly the West, cannot reliably condemn another, that a form of
relativism must rule.
But such assertions seem peculiar when trying to account for the recent
attack. This destruction seems to cry out for a transcendent ethical
perspective. And even mild relativism seems troubling in contrast. It
focuses on the symmetries between violations. But differences, say,
between democracies and absolutist societies or between types of armed
conflict are essential now. Debate over these kinds of interpretations are
now heating up. So it might be worth examining some hypotheses of poco and
pomo.
First of all there are some significant differences between the two
ideologies. Pomo is partly an attempt to question the fundamental
philosophical and political premises of the West. It argues that many of
the concepts we take for granted — including truth, morality and
objectivity — are culturally "constructed." And some scholars generally
agree, including the historian of science Thomas S. Kuhn, who argued that
science could not lay claim to universal truths, and the pragmatist
philosopher Richard Rorty, who has challenged objective notions of truth.
Poco, though, has a more specific ambition, analyzing the effects of
colonialism on what used to be called the third world, knottily
interpreting how postcolonial societies absorb and contend with the West.
But within the poco ideology, Western claims of objectivity are still put
into question. In "The Postcolonial Studies Reader" (1995, Routledge), for
example, the governing perspective, the editors explain, is opposition to
the West's "myth of universality," which is little more than a "strategy
of imperial control." One contributor writes: "Postcolonialism is regarded
as the need, in nations or groups which have been victims of imperialism,
to achieve an identity uncontaminated by universalist or Eurocentric
concepts and images."
In the Sept. 17 issue of The Nation — published just before the attack on
the World Trade Center — Edward Said, one of postcolonialism's founding
theorists, also points out that unlike radical pomo advocates, he accepts
universal principles like "human rights." Still, he refers to "ideological
confections": ideas like "the clash of civilizations" that,
coincidentally, were invoked by many European and American leaders in
condemning the terrorist attack. Such "false universals," Mr. Said says,
are used to legitimize "corporate profit-taking and political power."
Similar arguments have become commonplace in worldwide protests against
"globalization."
Follow this logic to its most extreme conclusions, and the rejections of
universal values and ideals leave little room for unqualified
condemnations of a terrorist attack, particularly one against the West.
Such an attack, however inexcusable, can be seen as a horrifying airing of
a legitimate cultural grievance. Military responses can seem no different.
And so the conflict becomes a series of symmetrical confrontations, as is
often asserted about battles in Israel.
Poco, though, goes further. For while affirming most of the pomo rejection
of ideals and universals, poco establishes its own universal: Western
imperialism becomes a variety of Original Sin. The implication is that any
act against the West by a postcolonial power can be seen as a reaction to
an act by the West.
These ideas simplify interpretation tremendously. Western imperial
behavior is seen as the fundamental cause of terrorism, the evil of the
former leading to the evil of the latter, thus creating a rough symmetry
in which differences are minimized.
In last week's issue of The Nation, for example, one writer, after
condemning the "indescribable evil" of the attack, says, "This is not
really the war of democracy versus terror that the world will be asked to
believe." The terrorist attacks, he suggests, were a result of injustices
caused by the West. Another writer says that "our own government, through
much of the past 50 years, has been the world's leading `rogue state,' "
having been responsible for killing "literally hundreds of thousands if
not millions, of innocents."
A column from The Guardian, the British newspaper, calls terror attacks
"counterproductive acts of outrage" against Western injustice. Similar
sentiments have been expressed about Israel, which is considered a proxy
for the United States. A commentator for the BBC said that supposed
Israeli violation of international law was a cause, if not the main cause,
of terrorism.
These attitudes are not a traditional expression of left-wing politics.
The anti-Western virulence is too strong, and the weakening of judgment
against terrorism too prevalent. Symmetries are strained for; one culture
(the West) is seen as no more virtuous — indeed far less so — than
another, leading to comments that sound eerily similar to some extreme
justifications offered in the Arab world.
Of course the errors and apparent venality of the West must be considered
in examining radical Islamic terrorism. But the intellectual focus on a
single and continuing Original Sin creates a skewed perspective.
As the historian Bernard Lewis has shown, the origins of what he calls
Islamic hatred of the West are complicated: a history of struggles going
back almost 14 centuries, the fear of modernity felt by "right wing"
theocratic fundamentalists, the countries' widespread poverty conjoined
with demagogic clerics and wealthy rulers. Terrorist rage is also directed
against Arab regimes in which secular life reigns over the religious realm
(as in Egypt and Jordan).
Christopher Hitchens, while attacking the West in the current issue of The
Nation, writes: "Does anyone suppose that an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza
would have forestalled the slaughter in Manhattan? It would take a moral
cretin to suggest anything of the sort; the cadres of the new jihad make
it very apparent that their quarrel is with Judaism and secularism on
principle, not with (or not just with) Zionism."
For now though these considerations are subsumed by poco ideology, spiced
by pomo sentiments. While condemning the recent attacks, they establish
near symmetries between the outrage of both sides, and they eliminate
perspectives that might reveal fundamental cultural differences (like
those affirmed, unambiguously, by the attackers). The great ironic twist
is that the values latent in pomo and poco — an insistence that differing
perspectives be accounted for and that the other be comprehended — are
consequences of the very ideas of the Western Enlightenment — reason and
universality — that they work to undo.
One can only hope that finally, as the ramifications sinks in, as it
becomes clear how close the attack came to undermining the political,
military and financial authority of the United States, the Western
relativism of pomo and the obsessive focus of poco will be widely seen as
ethically perverse. Rigidly applied, they require a form of guilty
passivity in the face of ruthless and unyielding opposition.